


The Theft of Attolia

by haygahr



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: A Suspiciously Pertinent Myth, F/M, The Gods Intercede, pirates!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:28:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23519989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haygahr/pseuds/haygahr
Summary: While Gen sails Attolia out of the harbor at Ephrata, a storm blows them out to sea.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Kudos: 10





	The Theft of Attolia

The Thief began muttering under his breath foul words, and Attolia's fear for her future was suffused by the far more immediate terror of being drowned at sea. 

They tacked again, yawning and she bit the inside of their cheek against any noise. 

The Thief had no such compunction, and screamed at the gods, the storm, the ocean, her and Eddis, and the Mede, going back several generations and impressive detail, from what she could hear over the storm. 

Their last tack was so fast and severe that if Attolia had been as slow to react as she had been when they began, she thought they surely would have overturned. 

Attolia did not immediately realize when the Thief began addressing her, waving the hook between himself and the sail. She slunk low across the boat and began to listen for his words. It was clear now that she would take direction not as a captive, but in her own self preservation. She held the rudder in place, while he began to trim the sails, struggling with one hand. She understood that they had given up in attempting to move against the storm, and were now merely engaged in surviving it. 

Returning to his place at the rudder, the Thief directed her to bail. She resented the necessity of this, but bailed until her arms were burned through with the unfamiliar labor, and then kept bailing. 

It lasted hours but the storm finally gentled to a bleary rain at dawn. Attolia felt like a rag rung out and left in a puddle. 

"Where are we?"

The Thief laughed. "I couldn't tell you if I wished, Your Majesty. I'm sure we've been blown miles off course and will likely die of dehydration before we land. I will have words for Eugenides in the underworld if I'm right."

She set the bucket on a bench while the Thief pulled at the ropes, opening sails. "Which way do you think land is?"

Attolia still was not certain that he was serious. It seemed impossible, that all of her efforts in this world would come to an end in an embarrassment of a fishing skiff with a boy whose hand she had cut off, dying of dehydration. What Sounis and the Mede had not been able to do, a storm and the hubris to not bring a compass would. The clouds were so thick they appeared to be inside one, and if the sun had risen above the horizon, it had not seen fit to notify them. 

The Thief raised a single eyebrow at her hesitation, and Attolia's hands grew hot. She was overcome with a sudden, drenching urge to approach him, rend his face with her hands, destroy him in a fit of temper. She nearly had, once. It seemed like a bad dream which she might yet wake from. 

Instead of answering, she moved the bucket along the bench so that it collected the rainwater which ran down the sail, so that they might have something to drink.

The Thief watched the path of her hand and after a moment swung out viciously with his hook, hitting the bucket and sending it flying, far out into the water. 

Attolia found herself speechless, alit with rage as the Thief laughed, apparently at himself, and then leapt over the side, sending the boat rocking and twisting in the surf. 

She scrambled to steady the boat, watching as the Thief paddled, in a thrashing doglike motion. The swing of the boat directed it to follow him, and she held the rudder straight, lowering a boathook over the side to bring him back in. 

"What on earth were you thinking?" her voice was as hoarse as a mule’s with screaming to be heard over the wind.

"That I don't enjoy this business of being betrayed by my gods," said the Thief. "I was so close." He laughed, fat droplets of water falling from his bangs to tangle in his eyelashes.

Without anything to say to that, entirely exhausted, Attolia wrapped herself in her soaked cloak and wedged herself into the bottom of the boat to sleep, without dreaming. 

When she woke after noon, the unseasonal storm had abated, and the sun shone. The Thief was humming, and steering nearly east. "How far do you think we were blown in the night?" said Attolia. 

"How would I know?" He seemed in fine spirits, and Attolia, furious with the ruination of her plans, aching all over from sleeping badly, stinking and soaked still, hated him for how unfamiliar it was. She recognized that in the normal course of things, the Thief was likely a cheerful sort of person. He would have to be, she found herself thinking, to hum so deliberately quietly as to not wake her. "I didn't expect to have any kind of grand sea adventure. We were just supposed to skirt the coast a few miles to escape your guards. I'm no sailor, and I won't pretend to be. But if we keep sailing east, we'll run into land eventually, right?“

Attolia kept her mouth closed, and spread out her mantle so that it would dry. She was forced to relieve herself over the side of the boat, and watched the Thief look away while she did so, out of some misplaced chivalry. The smooth side of his neck gave a false impression that if she were fast, she might be able to surprise him. After, he offered her a few mouthfuls of the water that had collected in the bottom of the bucket, brackish and sour.

Spreading her skirts around her, without anything more pressing to do, Attolia attacked the business of her hair, which had tangled and matted with her pins, still soaked through. The Thief watched and the sun shone, and the wind blew warm against her back. "What did you hope to achieve in stealing me?" she asked, honestly.

"Don't speak to quickly, Your Majesty. If we are not to be drowned, I may still achieve it."

Attolia doubted this. Their escape the night before would have been possible only with Eddisian forces waiting to move them quickly, before the alarm was sounded, as by now it certainly had been. There would be nowhere in Attolia for the Eddisians to hide, and fewer places in Sounis. They would be caught by her forces, if they were lucky. She shied away from imagining what she would have to do to him when her forces found them, to counteract the blow her reputation would have taken in allowing herself to be so thoroughly duped. 

As she picked through a particularly gnarled lock, the Thief held out his hook and waggled it. He raised his eyebrow suggestively. 

Attolia was so shocked she actually laughed. The Thief made an expression like someone had slapped him, and she turned away. On the blue horizon, a deformity appeared. Her breath caught in her throat, but it was the wrong side to be land. 

She watched the ship, and she thought that the Thief knew that she saw it, that it could only be a ship, whatever she was watching behind him. It grew, she thought, larger, and then it began to grow definitively larger, coming close. 

The Thief finally turned, though they didn't move off their eastern course. The flags it hung were hers, though it was a civilian ship, if it even was hers, and not a pirate or Sounisian merchant under false flags in Attolian controlled territory. From it's design, it was probably not Mede, but even that was questionable. 

The ship bore down on them. A rope dropped into their boat, and the Thief tied it off, sloppily. A ladder followed, and, they climbed aboard. 

"Welcome," said the captain, but even before he did, it was clear that the vessel was not the Attolian merchant ship it claimed to be. His clothes were Sounisian and plain, his accent more of both. "Welcome, esteemed passengers, to our humble ship. You seem to have been blown off course, have you not."

"Desperately," said the Thief. "We nearly drowned."

The captain was a big man, with a bush of brown hair and beard so great that his face gave the impression of having been carved bas relief into a knot of hair. His eyes were blue, and stared into her, intently. "Ah, young Tito on the mast saw the jewels you wear in your hair through his spyglass, and we knew that no fine lady such as yourself would be in such a boat on these waters as anything other than an accident, or am I mistaken? We hope you are clever enough to be give thanks to the gods for your rescue and not try anything similar again.“

Attolia held her tongue, and let him talk. "But welcome. I am Captain Orimedes, of Helen's Hart. We are, I am sure, your service, if you would be so kind as to inform us to whom we are."

"Well," the Thief began, and Attolia turned to him aghast. Little as she knew him, she knew that tone. "I am Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, and this is the Queen of Attolia. I have stolen her to be my wife from Ephrata.”

The crew, of course, had gathered to listen to the story of such foolhardy sailors, and now most of them began laughing. The captain mastered himself barely. "Perhaps I am behind on my gossip, but I had heard she cut your hand off."

Lounging against the side of the boat with all apparent casualness, the Thief shrugged. "Every marriage has its challenges."

The men laughed, but they did not relax. "Your real names, please," said that captain who could afford to be polite. 

"I am the eldest daughter of Baron Oronus,” said Attolia. "This is my guard, Titus. My family will pay for our return, if you send word to the capital."

"A guard with one arm," said the captain, as she had known he would. Attolia allowed herself to blush, and he laughed. "What noble family allows their daughter out on the open ocean with the company only of one guard, and him with only one hand?" He stepped close to her, and spoke softly. "Why don't you tell me who he is, really."

As though she had signaled him, the Thief stepped forward and shouted that the captain should remove his hands from the lady. His accents were Attolian, and impeccably upper class. Attolia suppressed a grimace, at having finally been given her wish in having the Thief safely at her disposal, in this of all ways. 

The captain smiled, his suspicions confirmed, and they were led to a cabin.

Within the cabin, Attolia was shocked to find that not only did they not search her, but they also did not disarm the Thief except for requesting his sword. They were not bound, and her jewelry she kept. Though, of course, where would they go if they escaped? For now, it seemed the best option to comply. 

The Thief complained until they were fed, after which he immediately settled to sleep on the one narrow bunk, with all outward appearance of comfort. "I've been up all night," he whined. "You'll have to take first watch."

Attolia was exhausted, but not enough to sleep in such circumstances. She sat on the floor with her back to the curving wall of the ship, and watched the Thief sleep, with rueful familiarity. Given the time and space to think, she knew that his jest about marrying her had been exactly as true as he claimed. It would be an exacting punishment, to give over Attolia into the hands of the Thief, to save or ruin as he chose. He could not kill her, of course, and expect to keep the loyalty of her barons, but she was certain marriage would be punishment enough. 

Attolia stared at the cruel curve of his hook, and the shape of his upper lip, where came to a point in the center in a soft, childish pout. She drew closer, carefully silent. He seemed relaxed in sleep, as she had never known him. The skin beneath his jaw trembled with his pulse, and under his eyelids, his eyes twitched in dreams. Without the storm, this would have been her king, one whom she couldn't poison from her glass or suffocate in his sleep, not at least for years, until she had dealt with the threat of retaliation from Eddis. This might be her king still. 

Attolia considered the future. If she could be ransomed to Oronus, there was some chance that they could catch the Thief, and dispense with him. But he had claimed to wish for an end to the war. She had not risen to power without noting opportunities when they presented themselves, and if the Thief really meant to use her to leverage peace with Attolia, she could do the same with him, cobbling together the bones of an agreement during their communal imprisonment, one that he could take back to his queen, and would not be quite so disadvantageous for her. This could be turned to her advantage. 

The Thief's body tensed, and she watched in silent horror as his breathing quickened, muscles shivered under his skin like a horse bothered by flies. He was having a nightmare, and she would not risk waking him from it, given its potential subject. For several minutes, he continued to stiffen and twitch, several times uttering soft cries, while Attolia watched. She hadn't liked it when she'd done it, and she'd liked it less after, but done was done. He would not grow another hand, and she would not look away.

The Thief woke gasping, turned to her, face frozen in a rictus, before he collected his expression into something passingly neutral. Attolia considered commenting, and decided against it. "Why do you plan to marry me, instead of one of the Eddis's other cousins, if that is what the alliance requires? I understand your wish to punish me, but certainly that could be achieved without punishing yourself as well."

Silently, the Thief turned in his bunk until his back was facing her, and lay still until he slept again.


End file.
